Character Spacing in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows

Font size does make a difference for the aesthetics of your slide, but what do you do if the text itself uses more or less space than you may want? Sometimes, you may want the text to take just a wee bit lesser space so that all content can fit within two lines rather than three. If you would like to alter the spacing between text characters, you can do so by using PowerPoint's Character Spacing option, which affects the appearance and readability of both title and body text. Essentially Character Spacing is the amount of space in-between individual letters. You can easily adjust this spacing for a cleaner look or to make more or less text fit within any text container.

Let us now explore how you can choose different Character Spacing options for the selected text on your slide in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows:

1. Open any presentation and select the text you want to change the Character Spacing for, as shown in Figure 1.
2. 
   Figure 1: Text selected on the slide
2. Now, access the Home tab of the Ribbon and click the Character Spacing button, highlighted in red within Figure 2.
3. 
   Figure 2: Character Spacing button
3. This brings up the Character Spacing drop-down gallery, as shown in Figure 3.
4. 
   Figure 3: Character Spacing drop-down gallery
5. Within the Character Spacing drop-down gallery, there are six options. Also, notice that within the Character Spacing drop-down gallery, a check mark is placed in front of the active option. The active option in Figure 3 is Normal. This indicates that the character spacing for the selected text is Normal. Also, as you hover your cursor over any of the first five options you'll see a Live Preview on the active slide for the selected text.
6. Figure 4, below shows immediate results of applying first five options of Character Spacing drop-down gallery to the selected text:
7. 
   Figure 4: Text applied with various Character Spacing options

Very Tight

8. This will condense the Character Spacing for the selected text by 3 points.

Tight

9. This will condense the Character Spacing for the selected text by 1.5 points.

Normal

10. This keeps the Character Spacing normal.

Loose

11. This will expand the Character Spacing for the selected text by 3 points.

Very Loose

12. This will expand the Character Spacing for the selected text by 6 points.

More Spacing

13. This option brings up the Font dialog box with the Character Spacing tab active, as shown in Figure 5. We already explored the Font tab of this dialog in our Font Dialog Box in PowerPoint 2016 for Windows tutorial.
14. 
    Figure 5: Character Spacing tab within the Font dialog box
15. Within this dialog box you can adjust character spacing and kerning using custom settings. To set custom spacing, choose from Normal, Expanded, and Condensed options from the Spacing drop-down list, and then enter the number of points by which you want to expand or condense the Character Spacing. You can also adjust the Kerning between two letters, based upon their shapes. Kerning takes the shapes of the letters into account as it selectively tightens the spacing. Click OK when done.
Note: If you need to use the same Character Spacing in all slides in your presentation, then it is advisable to adjust the Character Spacing options within individual Slide Layouts. You can edit Slide Layouts within the Slide Master view. The changes you make within the Slide Master view will affect all the slides in your presentation.
4. Save your presentation often.